Press Kit

About the Aspen
Network of Development Entrepreneurs

The
Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) is a global network of organizations
that propel entrepreneurship in emerging markets. ANDE members provide critical
financial, educational, and business support services to small and growing businesses
(SGBs) based on the conviction that SGBs will create jobs, stimulate long-term economic
growth, and produce environmental and social benefits. Ultimately, ANDE believes
that SGBs can help lift countries out of poverty. ANDE is part of the Aspen Institute,
an educational and policy studies organization. For more information please click here.

Mismatched goals between investors and entrepreneurs as well as a potential cultural bias may both prove to limit the positive effect that accelerators have in emerging market contexts. Regardless, accelerators still have an important role to play that can help position entrepreneurs for success. ANDE Executive Director Randall Kempner and Academic Director of Social Enterprise at Goizueta, Peter Roberts, discuss how.

The key to unlocking global prosperity may be right under our noses. Partnering with small and growing businesses can create social wins even for corporations not explicitly focused on social impact. This article explores how with real-world examples.

Better Than Most is a regular feature of The Business of Giving examining the best places to work among social good businesses and nonprofit organizations. This episode features a visit to the ANDE offices, where host Denver Frederick interviewed Executive Director Randall Kempner, and three ANDE staff members about what it's like to work at ANDE.

This article (in Portuguese) discusses a presentation and discussion that ANDE Executive Director Randall Kempner led in Brazil on philanthropic capital and private and social investment. ANDE member ICE also wrote up a summary of the event (also in Portuguese).

In this podcast episode, Disruptivo speaks with ANDE’s partners at Emory University about the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI), which is evaluating whether or not accelerators have a positive impact on businesses that go through these programs. This episode is in a mix of Spanish and English.

In developed and developing economies, the role of Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs) cannot be overemphasized. The Nigerian Tribune covered the ANDE West Africa Chapter's Lagos entrepreneurial ecosystem snapshot launch, identifying trends, challenges, and opportunities.

The ANDE West Africa Chapter was featured in The Nation, a Nigerian newspaper, for releasing the Lagos Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Snapshot. This article discusses what is required for a start-up community to thrive.

Ross Baird of Village Capital and Dave Kim of the Gates Foundation address the the Silicon Valley model of investing,arguing that there is a "fundamental disconnect between entrepreneurs and (often foreign) investors in East Africa and India." They cite ANDE in reference to their discussion of human capital.

A new partnership announced in April will see the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Rockefeller Foundation join forces to boost entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia. Devex spoke with Jenny Everett, managing director of ANDE, about the impact and and goals of the new partnership.

Gabriella Mulligan writes about the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative's (GALI) findings in its second major report. Accelerator programs in emerging markets are growing revenues, employees, equity, and debt investment. GALI is a collaboration between ANDE and Emory University.

The Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI), a partnership between ANDE and Emory University, has released its second major report. Accelerating Startups in Emerging Markets: Insights from 43 Programs examines data from over 2,400 early- stage ventures that applied to 43 acceleration programs run by twelve different organizations in nine countries. The report, developed in partnership with Deloitte Canada, compares the performance of accelerators in emerging markets with those operating in high-income countries (categories as defined by the World Bank).

Steve Clemons of The Atlanticinterviews ANDE's Executive Director, Randall Kempner, on a session called Data and the Regional Economy during Crunching the Numbers: an Atlantic forum on data analytics and tomorrow's workforce.

With traditional investment funds now hunting for impact opportunities alongside venture capitalists in Latin America, where Mexico, Brazil and Colombia grab most attention,Sophie Hares interviews experts on the subject, including ANDE's Central America and Mexico Chapter Manager, Katia Dumont, to find out where the most impact can happen and how.

Entrepreneurship is growing in South Africa. On the heels of the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, Zipho Sikhakhane writes about how levels of entrepreneurship has increased, while pointing out the challenges that remain, based on the latest entrepreneurial ecosystem map that ANDE's South Africa regional chapter just released.

Youth unemployment remains a major challenge in East Africa, while startups often have trouble filling all their open positions that will help them scale up their business. Mary Mwangi and Kate McElligott share how ANDE members are helping solve these challenges.

The impact investing landscape in Brazil has evolved significantly in the past several years. Two ANDE staff members based in Brazil, Rebeca Rocha and Rob Parkinson, write about the top five things you need to know to understand the evolution of the industry (in Portuguese).

On International Women's Day, Rosario Uriarte, ANDE's Central America and Mexico Regional Chapter Program Coordinator, discusses the challenges and opportunities for women entrepreneurs in Mexico with with Noticieros Televisa in Mexico (in Spanish).

The Merriam-Webster dictionary declares that an “accelerator” could be a device for controlling speed, or an apparatus for imparting high velocities to charged particles, but makes no mention of startups.But Google search results towards accelerators of the entrepreneur variety. So what does the entrepreneurship landscape look like. ANDE's Director of Research and Impact, Genevieve Edens, writes to point to a new source to find out.

Hundreds of accelerators—intensive, short term programs that speed up the development of early stage ventures to succeed, or fail—have emerged around the world. While the concept began in Silicon Valley, international development funders have seen the model as a way to drive growth in emerging markets as well. Genevieve Edens, ANDE's Director of Research and Impact, shares a sneak peek of new data that compares accelerator data in emerging markets and in developed countries.

Access to clean water and sanitation has enormous health and development implications, especially in urban slums. ANDE's India Regional Chapter Program Coordinator, Devyani Singh, writes about increasingly viable business solutions to address the sanitation crisis in India, and how these solutions are essential to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

As the host of two historic UN summits on sustainable development in the past 25 years, it should come as no surprise that Brazil is actively engaged in testing innovative approaches to reach the sustainable development goals.Rob Parkinson, a consultant for the ANDE in Brazil, writes about how local and global efforts to support small and growing businesses in Brazil are having an impact.

A British Council report says that a majority of social enterprises in India are focused on skill development, followed by education. Moyna Manku highlights the key findings of this report, conducted in partnership with the British Council, Ennovent Pvt Ltd, and ANDE.

Ideas: the Magazine of the Aspen Institute
Kate McElligott
November 17, 2016

260 member organizations, based in 35 countries, working in emerging-market economies around the world with a single shared mission: spur entrepreneurship to help the poor. Kate McElligott, ANDE’s Director of Strategic Development writes about how ANDE moved from idea to reality, and the impact members are having individually and collectively.

In this article for Global Entrepreneurship Week, Lisa van Eck, ANDE's South Africa Regional Chapter Coordinator writes about the importance of ecosystems, youth, gender, and skills deficits, and also examines access to finance and impact investing in the South African context.

Business of Giving
Randall Kempner and Denver Frederick
November 6, 2016

Denver Frederick interviews ANDE's Executive Director, Randall Kempner, on the Business of Giving radio show. Listen to the recording to learn more about ANDE's mission, vision, and what challenges and opportunities lie ahead.

A new report is starting to fill the void in access to reliable data to inform investment decisions. The report is compiled by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, the Latin American Private Equity & Venture Capital Association — abbreviated LAVCA in Spanish — and LGT Impact Ventures, an impact investor. Naki B. Mendoza reviews the report and interviews ANDE Executive Director Randall Kempner about the report and its implications for impact investing in Latin America.

Steven Koltai argues why the U.S. foreign aid budget should include more funding for global entrepreneurship. Koltai also discusses ANDE's research on what percentage of global aid goes toward entrepreneurship, as well as how the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative is exploring important issues around what seems to be working in startup acceleration.

Unicorn is a Silicon Valley buzzword that describes companies that are valued at $1 billion or more. But many in the global development community are questioning whether this should be a benchmark for entrepreneurial success. ANDE's Executive Director, Randall Kempner, is featured in this article, arguing that what matters more is reaching a billion people.

ANDE's Executive Director, Randall Kempner, writes about what needs to change in Silicon Valley in order to truly support entrepreneurs in emerging market countries to no only create sustainable enterprises, but to also tackle the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Catholic Church now wants to apply market-based solutions to solve the world's most intractable problems. In advance of the Vatican Conference on Impact Investing, Naki B. Mendoza interviews ANDE Executive Director Randall Kempner and others in the ANDE network about the role the Catholic Church can play in moving the needle impact investing for global poverty reduction.

Tara Murphy Forde, Vice President of Impact and Strategic Initiatives at Global Partnerships, shares her view on the importance of industry engagement and highlights some of her high level take-aways from the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) Metrics from the Ground Up conference.

For all of the disruptions wrought by the global digital revolution, “Silicon Valley” has sometimes turned its back on the rest of the world. David Bank and Dennis Price dive into what may be missing from the conversations in Silicon Valley, including at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, and how ANDE and its members are an important for helping the small and growing businesses around the world that can actually tackle the development challenge.

In this podcast, Peter Roberts discusses to what extent accelerators actually accelerate growth of early-stage ventures and what types of programming offered by accelerators have the highest impact on entrepreneurial success. Accelerators are affected by some of the challenges small and growing business face, like attracting managerial talent. This and other challenges are detailed further in ANDE's State of the Sector report, which is also discussed during this episode.

The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) believes that the small and growing business sector is the lynchpin holding the promise of emerging market impact investing together, Petra Cahill writes. In this article, she interviews ANDE Executive Director Randall Kempner about ANDE, how ANDE connects the small & growing business sector in emerging markets to impact investing capital, and what ANDE finds that small business entrepreneurs most need.

The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) released its annual State of the Small & Growing Business Sector Report on June 15, 2016. The report explores the state of the global SGB sector and also dives into regional market insights. It discusses the hurdles for emerging market entrepreneurship—access to capital, talent and markets—and assesses how well the sector is addressing these.

Sergio Goldman, a consultant and former financial market executive who now writes for one of Brazil's major newspapers, explores the growth of the impact investing market in the country. He highlights the Impact Investing mapping exercise that ANDE conducted in 2014, along with the work various ANDE members have been doing locally.

Setting out to do good with your career is no longer just the realm of the charitable sector. Jessica Tasman-Jones spoke with social entrepreneurs from business-owning families trying to tackle the world’s ills one by one, and references ANDE's research on impact fund managers on the African continent.

Non-governmental organizations have a unique role to play in supporting enterprises in frontier markets. Several ANDE members are actually part of an impact investing network that ANDE and InsideNGO support to help NGOs address the key skill gaps that social enterprises experience in emerging makets.

Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship blog, a joint publication of the Kauffman Foundation and the Public Forum Institute
April 11, 2016
By Jonathan Ortmans

While many startup success stories like Facebook did not involve accelerators, most entrepreneurs now consider them part of the start and scale journey. This has driven demand for the launch of hundreds of accelerator programs around the world, prompting us to question how differences across accelerator programs influence startup performance.

Disrupt Africa reported last year the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) and Emory University’s Social Enterprise @ Goizueta were to conduct a study on the impact of accelerator programs across the world. Tom Jackson reports on the first part of this research, which has now been released after the partners worked with seed-stage accelerator Village Capital to examine 15 programs and the influence they had on the startups that participated.

In this article in TechCrunch, Connie Loizos writes about the $2.3 million private-public partnership called the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI)'s first major report release, in collaboration with Village Capital, a seed-stage accelerator that operates development programs for early-stage entrepreneurs from around the world. Loizos explores the initial findings of the report, along with the caveats.

Accelerators work, but the best ways to help entrepreneurs may surprise many startup veterans, according to a report released Monday that, for the first time, examines the effectiveness of accelerators and incubators working in development. Adva Saldinger reports.

ANDE's Executive Director, Randall Kempner, participated in an agribusiness-focused event and pitch competition Ghana, where he identified access to talent or human resources as a major challenge facing small businesses. The Mobile Business Clinic, which is part of the Lundin Foudation in Accra, hosted the event, selected three winners at the end of the competition.

ANDE's Director of Strategic Development reflects on a week spent in Amsterdam with entrepreneurs from around the globe for the launch of VilCap Communities. She realizes that attracting capital may actually be the easy part, compares do developing talent alongside financial growth, and that understanding the effectiveness of accelerators may play a key role.

As traditional sources of capital show no signs of growth, as donors are making a push to work with more local organizations, and as impact investing and the role of entrepreneurship in development have gained more attention, INGOs are exploring their options. Adva Saldinger writes about how ANDE members are working to identify new ways to help out the missing middle.

Isaac Gross attended the ANDE Investment Manager Training (IMT) in Brazil in December 2015 and writes about his experience in Wall Street Oasis: "Impact investing is a growing industry and it is important to provide people with the resources they require. In order for the field to continue to advance, we need more programs like the MIINT and the ANDE Investment Manager Training to prepare the next generation of impact investors."

This article, on a Brazilian site dedicated to innovation and education in Brazil, discusses a recent report that ANDE published with the support of SAP: "Education for the 22nd Century." It discusses the major findings and recommendations, and focuses on the Brazilian context.

"We live in a world characterized by gender inequality. Throughout the globe, women continue to struggle for equal wages, access to capital and financing, training, supply chain inclusion and more. This state of affairs is unfair, unethical and unwise. Reams of research show that investing in women is not only the right thing to do, it’s the economically smart thing to do—for women and men." Randall Kempner makes the case for why it's past time for the world to invest more in women.

"A successful entrepreneurship ecosystem can help hundreds of social enterprises thrive," write Kate McElligott and Randall Kempner. This article lays out six things to keep in mind when implementing an entrepreneurial ecosystem initiative in order to improve the environment in which social entrepreneurs work.

Shared Value Initiative
November 17, 2015
By Stephanie Buck and Nish PangaliWhen employers support enterprises that improve education outcomes, they deliver success for both their own business and for young people. In this blog for the Shared Value Initiative, Stephanie Buck and Nish Pangali of SAP discuss how corporations can support education-focused entrepreneurs, and why it matters.

Incubators and accelerators are meant to provide technical assistance to businesses on the cusp of growth. Many incubators have launched successful companies, but do developing world entrepreneurs may have a different set of needs. We need more data to find out what types of programs and which elements create the greatest impact. Adva Saldinger provides an overview of the GALI project in the context of global development and highlights insights from the GALI partners.

What good is a business plan if you can't get the financing to implement it? Genevieve Edens asks this question as she explores how creative collaborations are deploying the capital that promising social
enterprises need.

Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship blog, a publication of the Kauffman Foundation
August 17, 2015
By Jonathan OrtmansThis blog discusses the importance of rigorous research and market assessments to understand how best to support entrepreneurial growth. Only with data, Ortmans writes, can we produce effective strategies to tackle poverty and unemployment. Discusses the new public-private partnership, the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI).

Jackson writes about the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI) launch at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi that took place at the end of July. He describes the goals of the new US$2.3 million partnership with the U.S. Global Development Lab at USAID, Omidyar Network, the Lemelson Foundation, and the Argidius Foundation, which include understanding the efficacy of accelerator programs.

The first Rwandan Impact Hub opened in Kigali August 3rd. At a launch event, ANDE Executive Director Randall Kempner gave the keynote address, during which he discussed the importance of collaboration in driving social change.

Startup accelerator programs are running rampant around the world, but it remains unclear how effective they are, especially in emerging markets. Anne Field writes about the new $2.3 million three-year partnership that ANDE and Emory University, supported by the U.S. Global Development Lab at USAID, Omidyar Network, The Lemelson Foundation, and the Argidius Foundation, that will explore the impact and effectiveness of accelerators.

"Hundreds of these support programs for entrepreneurs have emerged over the past few years, and little is known about what’s working and what isn’t,” adds Sean Peters, who leads the Impact of Entrepreneurship Database at the Goizueta Business School, to this launch announcement for the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI).

Stanford Social Innovation Review
June 30, 2015
By Randall Kempner and Kate McElligott

International donors are turning to the private sector to achieve development goals, but as discussed in the State of the Sector report, a disproportionately small amount of funding goes to support small and medium enterprises and entrepreneurship. Yet returns on small and growing businesses have some of the greatest potential to benefit whole communities. Randall Kempner and Kate McElligott discuss this further in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Having qualified management teams is essential to receiving capital that can grow a business. But assembling highly qualified leadership teams is not easy. In the State of the Sector report, we cite talent development as one of the major obstacles holding entrepreneurs in emerging markets back. ANDE Executive Director, Randall Kempner, explores this issue more in the Financial Times.

Social enterprises the world over are bursting at the seams with innovations to tackle poverty and promote social good, but precisely how to measure the impact of their initiatives remains a recurring question. Naki B. Mendoza explores this issue in the context of ANDE's annual conference on metrics and impact measurement in Washington, DC.

There's a lot of talk about making the Sustainable Development Goals local. But what does that look like in practice? In this article in the Guardian, ANDE Executive Director Randall Kempner discusses how local entrepreneurs can hold the key to truly sustainable development, and how we cannot forget about them.

What are the three biggest challenges facing small and growing businesses in emerging markets over the next three years? ANDE Executive Director, Randall Kempner, posed this question to fifteen international development leaders in February of this year. These were the top issues that emerged.

Plenty of people have opinions about accelerator programs, but where's the data? Kempner and Roberts discuss why we're in the dark on whether or not accelerators work and in what context, and what ANDE and Emory University's Social Enterprise @ Goizueta are doing about it in this Wall Street Journal article.

The world needs jobs—and small, early-stage businesses in developing countries have the potential to create them. Yet, emerging market startups struggle with the same challenges as larger, more established firms. Randall Kempner writes about the obstacles for small and growing businesses - or SGBs as we like to refer to them - in the Wall Street Journal.

After tremendous progress in standardizing language and platforms for shared measurement over the past five years, have we reached a plateau? As a group of organizations with the shared mission of supporting small and growing businesses (SGBs) in low- and middle-income countries, we have agreed on common terms for measurement, aggregated our data, and started to demonstrate our collective scale and reach. So where do we take metrics from here?

ANDE is featured in an article by Alice Korngold about the potential for business to solve poverty. The article recaps some of the great points made during the expert panel at ANDE's Annual Conference. The panel featured Jacqueline Novgratz, Paul Polak, and Paul Basil.

Nicole Wallace writes about the challenges that small and growing businesses face in developing countries, and the organizations that are working to help these businesses as a way of improving the standard of living for local residents, including ANDE.

Tiny startups in developing countries have a savior in microfinancing organizations like Kiva, but what about the small- to medium-sized businesses that don't qualify for microloans? These businesses, commonly called "the missing middle," have between 10 and 300 employees and usually seek between $20,000 and $2 million. They are the backbone of economic growth in developing nations, but are tragically undersupported. Ariel Schwartz writes about how ANDE and its members are trying to fill this gap.